The Reign of Greed | Page 4

like Ben-Zayb (anagram of Ibañez), who believed that the people
of Manila thought because he, Ben-Zayb, was a thinker; a canon like
Padre Irene, who added luster to the clergy with his rubicund face,
carefully shaven, from which towered a beautiful Jewish nose, and his
silken cassock of neat cut and small buttons; and a wealthy jeweler like
Simoun, who was reputed to be the adviser and inspirer of all the acts
of his Excellency, the Captain-General--just consider the presence there

of these pillars sine quibus non of the country, seated there in agreeable
discourse, showing little sympathy for a renegade Filipina who dyed
her hair red! Now wasn't this enough to exhaust the patience of a
female Job--a sobriquet Doña Victorina always applied to herself when
put out with any one!
The ill-humor of the señora increased every time the captain shouted
"Port," "Starboard" to the sailors, who then hastily seized their poles
and thrust them against the banks, thus with the strength of their legs
and shoulders preventing the steamer from shoving its hull ashore at
that particular point. Seen under these circumstances the Ship of State
might be said to have been converted from a tortoise into a crab every
time any danger threatened.
"But, captain, why don't your stupid steersmen go in that direction?"
asked the lady with great indignation.
"Because it's very shallow in the other, señora," answered the captain,
deliberately, slowly winking one eye, a little habit which he had
cultivated as if to say to his words on their way out, "Slowly, slowly!"
"Half speed! Botheration, half speed!" protested Doña Victorina
disdainfully. "Why not full?"
"Because we should then be traveling over those ricefields, señora,"
replied the imperturbable captain, pursing his lips to indicate the
cultivated fields and indulging in two circumspect winks.
This Doña Victorina was well known in the country for her caprices
and extravagances. She was often seen in society, where she was
tolerated whenever she appeared in the company of her niece, Paulita
Gomez, a very beautiful and wealthy orphan, to whom she was a kind
of guardian. At a rather advanced age she had married a poor wretch
named Don Tiburcio de Espadaña, and at the time we now see her,
carried upon herself fifteen years of wedded life, false frizzes, and a
half-European costume--for her whole ambition had been to
Europeanize herself, with the result that from the ill-omened day of her
wedding she had gradually, thanks to her criminal attempts, succeeded

in so transforming herself that at the present time Quatrefages and
Virchow together could not have told where to classify her among the
known races.
Her husband, who had borne all her impositions with the resignation of
a fakir through so many years of married life, at last on one luckless
day had had his bad half-hour and administered to her a superb whack
with his crutch. The surprise of Madam Job at such an inconsistency of
character made her insensible to the immediate effects, and only after
she had recovered from her astonishment and her husband had fled did
she take notice of the pain, then remaining in bed for several days, to
the great delight of Paulita, who was very fond of joking and laughing
at her aunt. As for her husband, horrified at the impiety of what
appeared to him to be a terrific parricide, he took to flight, pursued by
the matrimonial furies (two curs and a parrot), with all the speed his
lameness permitted, climbed into the first carriage he encountered,
jumped into the first banka he saw on the river, and, a Philippine
Ulysses, began to wander from town to town, from province to
province, from island to island, pursued and persecuted by his
bespectacled Calypso, who bored every one that had the misfortune to
travel in her company. She had received a report of his being in the
province of La Laguna, concealed in one of the towns, so thither she
was bound to seduce him back with her dyed frizzes.
Her fellow travelers had taken measures of defense by keeping up
among themselves a lively conversation on any topic whatsoever. At
that moment the windings and turnings of the river led them to talk
about straightening the channel and, as a matter of course, about the
port works. Ben-Zayb, the journalist with the countenance of a friar,
was disputing with a young friar who in turn had the countenance of an
artilleryman. Both were shouting, gesticulating, waving their arms,
spreading out their hands, stamping their feet, talking of levels,
fish-corrals, the San Mateo River, [2] of cascos, of Indians, and so on,
to the great satisfaction of their listeners and the undisguised disgust of
an elderly Franciscan, remarkably thin and withered, and a handsome
Dominican about whose lips flitted